MioTech, a financial tech startup with offices in Hong Kong and Shanghai, has raised $7 million in Series A funding to develop artificial intelligence based software for investment managers. The round was led by Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Hong Kong business tycoon Li Ka-shing, with participation from returning investor Zhenfund.

MioTech’s graph database is designed to help large financial services firms store and process terabytes of data. Its analytics engine helps investment managers combine data from a variety of sources, including market prices, news events and micro- and macroeconomic activity, and get insights to help them manage their portfolios.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Jason Tu tells TechCrunch that MioTech will use its new funding to hire talent from top tech and financial companies such as Google, Facebook and Morgan Stanley. MioTech plans to focus its research and development on building its data feed pipeline and machine learning research team, as well as working with financial data providers to grow its data analytics tools.

Financial services is seen as one of the main industries that will benefit from artificial intelligence tools and many of the biggest firms, such as Merrill Lynch, are working on their own artificial intelligence based software.

Well-funded startups also developing AI-based tools for wealth managers include Addepar and Palantir. But Tu says that while consumers have benefitted tremendously from tech innovations by companies like Google, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent, the financial industry lags behind because many financial service firms rely on in-house tech teams, which means that “fintech continues to be more ‘finance’ than ‘tech,’ especially in Asia.”

“We are a group of hardcore technologists who aspire to bring true cutting-edge technology from research, consumer, enterprise software and many other industries, much of which have already changed your daily life, to the financial industry which is still dominated by error-prone processes and lacks big data analysis capabilities,” he adds.

In a statement, Horizons Ventures project director Frances Kang said “MioTech’s ability to capture, aggregate and dissect the data helps asset managers and financial advisors to have deeper insights in serving their clients. We believe that MioTech fits well with our portfolios of fintech and insurtech companies.”